The Truth About Her Life
by bj
Summary: "A feminist is any woman who tells the truth about her life." An explanation of CJ & Qumar.


Disclaimer: Ah! Don't own 'West Wing,' can claim no ownership of Virginia Woolf, and give all ownership of one of the best lines in this story to Windy, from the MBTV forum.  
  
Author's Note: This story contains some violence towards the end, so be warned and beware. More notes at the end. It's a reward :)  
  
  
  
The Truth About Her Life  
  
By BJ Garrett  
  
  
  
A feminist is any woman who tells the truth about her life. --Virginia Woolf  
  
  
  
Now: Home  
  
There is a run in the left thigh of her nylons. She tries to take them off slowly, so they can be repaired with clear nail polish and hung in the bathroom until morning. When she can only watch the striation grow longer, wider, as she pulls the material down her leg, she grits her teeth and hooks her fingernails in the tear, ripping the nylons off.  
  
They flutter to the floor beside the bed, ashamed and beige on the blue carpet.  
  
Moonlight cuts crisply through the room like the silver of a black and white film. She raises her hands to her face, looks at the short, deep red lines in her fingertips, caused by the strength of the nylon fibres.  
  
She has railed at so many cages, clawed at so many walls. To come to this.  
  
Fighting back against clothing.  
  
  
  
Today: Washington, DC  
  
"Do you remember, CJ? Do you remember printing off petitions, counting names? Do you remember making signs? Do you remember yelling into a crowd that was yelling back? Do you remember the joy, the awe, the truth of what we were doing?"  
  
Her head throbbed and she couldn't answer. Waving her hand, she turned away from Alice.  
  
The other woman made an inarticulate, but disbelieving, noise. "I appreciate the heads-up, but come on. Can't you give us more than that? This is your fight too."  
  
"No," CJ said, painfully amused. "It was my fight. Not anymore. I gave you a heads-up. I didn't have to. Around here, you take what you can get."  
  
"These women, CJ..." Alice started in a low, urgent voice.  
  
The gesture CJ gave her over her shoulder made her close her teeth audibly. "I can't do anything about it, okay? It's not my job."  
  
"It's not--"  
  
"I don't advise foreign policy," she told Alice, reminded herself. "It's not my job."  
  
"This isn't foreign policy. This is life and death. They'll die, CJ. They'll be killed."  
  
Flexing her shoulders, she looked back at her old friend. "Don't do this to me, please."  
  
She felt the pain on her face, knew she looked thin, weary, beaten.  
  
"Don't do this to me, I can't. Okay?"  
  
"They'll be stoned to death. You know they will."  
  
Alice was stronger, Alice had always been stronger. Alice wouldn't give up and just do her job.  
  
CJ had realised a long time ago she was not Alice.  
  
"We don't know that," she said, trying to sound like Leo, like Nancy. "There's no evidence."  
  
Alice furrowed her brow at the unfamiliar tone. "CJ. We don't know because no woman has ever escaped and been caught and sent back before. That's why there's no evidence. Look at their record, just look at the facts; it's a reasonable, logical extrapolation."  
  
"Alice." She waited until their eyes had locked. "Don't do this to me. You know there's nothing I can do. Don't do this."  
  
Alice stood, walked to the open door, tucked her purse under her arm as she looked back at CJ with disillusionment in her dark eyes. "Yeah. Don't do this to you. It's our government doing this to them."  
  
  
  
Then: Los Angeles, 1983  
  
The offices for Immigration Advocacy International were adjacent to the offices of the Women's Emancipation Network where CJ worked as a media liaison. The idealistic immigration lawyers and the rabid feminists would often lunch together outside the bright white building, squinting at each other in the LA sunlight.  
  
They once spoke animatedly about the problems facing women who tried to immigrate illegally to the United States.  
  
"And if she doesn't speak English, whammo," Alice said, dumping the paper bag full of garbage into a nearby can. "Don't even ask me about the ones with children."  
  
CJ couldn't quite wrap her head around it. "What if--what if they're in danger if they go back?"  
  
Alice and the other lawyers shrugged, feigning nonchalance. The gravity of their expressions betrayed the passion they really felt. "They don't have money, they don't speak the language, they don't have a man to take care of them, and they might have kids to feed, clothe, house, and educate. Why do we want to deal with that?"  
  
"Well, for one thing, there's the invitation on that big chick statue in New York," CJ replied.  
  
The lawyers laughed, and the feminists glared.  
  
  
  
Today: Washington, DC  
  
"She didn't burn her bra, CJ," Josh called as they passed in the hallway.  
  
"What?"  
  
They both stopped, turned, looked at each other for a moment.  
  
"Amy Gardner," he said finally.  
  
"From the WLC."  
  
"Yeah."  
  
As they put their backs to one another again, she said to no one in particular, "Note to self, Amy Gardner didn't burn her bra." Then she turned around again. "Josh?"  
  
He nearly tripped over Bonnie as he spun to face her. "Yes?"  
  
"Why do I care?"  
  
"Just a...." He seemed at a loss to explain it. "Just. She's not a real feminist if she didn't...you know. The bra. Right?"  
  
They stared at each other some more.  
  
Then CJ walked away, the scent of burning polyester in the back of her head.  
  
  
  
Then: San Francisco, 1985  
  
"You're sure we're not just begging to be called lesbians?" she shouted at Alice, who cupped a hand around her ear and squinted.  
  
The ballroom was full of short-haired women who wore no make-up. Many carried radically anti-male signs and banners, most were shouting slogans at each other. There were t-shirts reading "Balls are for dogs" on sale at a booth on the side of the room.  
  
One woman, wearing a whistle on a rainbow-coloured cord around her neck, was screaming into a bullhorn on the platform.  
  
"We're not getting anything done with this," she said at a normal volume. "We're yelling so loud nobody can hear."  
  
Alice moved closer, smiling tentatively in agreement with whatever CJ had said. She pointed at her ear and yelled, "It's really noisy in here."  
  
  
  
Now: Home  
  
She carefully cuts the good leg of the ruined nylons into sections. On Sunday, she will finish her briefing and come home, put thyme, rosemary, lemongrass into the nylon tubes and tie off the ends. She will tuck the sachets into the cushions of the couch, behind the speakers of the computer in her office, under the scarves and bras in her drawers.  
  
She ignores the tears and hoarse sobs as she works. She focuses on the length of each section and the feeling of the heel bone of her thumb sliding over the handle of the scissors.  
  
She tries not to think about the women being beaten while she sits safe in her apartment.  
  
She tries not to think of the rapes. Of the unwanted pregnancies. Of the murders.  
  
The seconds tick by in her head, and she counts each woman's scream as it fades.  
  
  
  
Today: Washington, DC  
  
Leo gave her a warning look as she entered his office. She left again.  
  
She leaned against the wall beside the door, nodded at Sam as he passed with a questioning look.  
  
"Okay, CJ?"  
  
Shrugging, she smiled miserably. "Hey, Sam. Yeah. Sure."  
  
Without another word, he propped up the wall beside her for several minutes.  
  
"Did you hear about the refugee women?" she asked. She didn't really want to have this conversation with him, but was well aware that Sam was better than nobody.  
  
"The six women from Qumar who claim they'll be executed if they're deported?"  
  
She paused, forced the fury to dim before she answered. "Yes."  
  
"I heard."  
  
"They ran away, Sam. They disguised themselves as foreign nationals, managed to get false papers of all kinds, and flew to JFK two weeks ago. Security caught them and turned them over to INS when they said they were refugees. They're going to be deported tomorrow because they don't have documentary proof that they'll be killed if they go back. They lived in Hell, they went through Hell to get here, and now we're sending them back. We'll keep the Christians, but not the women."  
  
She heard his quick inhalation at her last remark, and smirked.  
  
"The treaty," he said slowly. "It's going to get ratified this year."  
  
"The treaty," she repeated, rolling the words around in her mouth, in her head, feeling for truth in them. Bitterness clouded the tears in her voice as she replied, "Yeah. This year."  
  
He stepped in front of her, gave her a serious look. "If we help them get out of a third-world situation, maybe they'll stop acting like they live in the stone age."  
  
"This year."  
  
He nodded. "Yeah."  
  
"No, Sam," she said fiercely. He stepped back, looked over her shoulder with a pained expression.  
  
"What about last year? Or the years before? Where were we then? Where are we now for all the other women who live in nations where they're enslaved and oppressed?"  
  
The random staffers in the hall stopped and stared over her shoulder too.  
  
"CJ. Come in here, please," Leo said in a hard voice.  
  
  
  
Then: New York, 1989  
  
CJ grinned at Toby, grinned at Andi, grinned at Alice and Bobby and Charlotte.  
  
It was the night before the mayoral elections. They were sequestered in a motel not far from campaign headquarters. Toby had already given it over as a loss. "You can't run against an incumbent with a drunken, divorced Methodist," he said morosely.  
  
"You can't run against anybody with a drunken, divorced Methodist," Charlotte replied, crow-barring the top off her beer with a house key.  
  
"Except maybe a drunken, divorced Baptist," was Alice's punchline.  
  
Bobby cut in with one of his own, and the drinks kept getting poured sloppily between them, and they apologised for their lack of political- correctness to each other.  
  
And CJ just smiled at them all. These people, her friends, with their feisty haircuts and well-padded suits. Charlotte's bright red lipstick.  
  
In twelve hours, they would be watching their candidate give his concession speech with a slight, hardly noticeable slur. In ten days, CJ would be back at her old job on the West coast, she would take Bobby and Charlotte with her at Toby's insistence. In two weeks, the three of them would bleed bright red all over the carpet at the WEN office in LA.  
  
  
  
Now: Home  
  
Unbuttoning her shirt in the bathroom, she traces her fingers over her protruding collarbone, thinks of months in a cast that immobilised her left arm and shoulder.  
  
She thinks of watching him come through the doors of the office, watching him pull the shotgun out from under his trenchcoat.  
  
It is all slow motion. It is artistic, and it is apocalyptic.  
  
She closes her eyes against the looks on their faces when he started shooting. Clenches her fist against the feeling of rough carpet on her palms, knees, face.  
  
  
  
Today: Washington, DC  
  
"It's insane, Toby!" Josh exclaimed.  
  
"It's going to work."  
  
"You'll never be able to spin that."  
  
"I don't have to. That's what these good people are here for." He gestured to Connie and Doug.  
  
"Actually, no. That's what I'm here for," CJ said as she entered the Roosevelt Room.  
  
There was a tense bright hardness to her that felt good. It felt powerful, it felt out of control. It felt righteous.  
  
"Hey," Toby said, as if he'd seen her someplace before and couldn't quite remember where. "Sam said you were in with Leo."  
  
"Yeah." She ran a hand around her neck. "I was. I'm not anymore."  
  
  
  
Then: Los Angeles, 1989  
  
A young woman with black roots under her platinum curls stumbled into the office.  
  
She wiped a hand across her mouth, smearing blood over her cheek.  
  
The men and women in the waiting room stared at the knife sticking out of her chest, on the right side, a mother-of-pearl handle above the yellow of her jacket.  
  
"Help," she croaked.  
  
CJ unfroze, reaching out as Charlotte fumbled inelegantly to the floor.  
  
  
  
Today: Washington, DC  
  
"I used to be young," she said angrily to Toby. "I used to be young, and unafraid, and I--"  
  
"CJ."  
  
Toby's voice was the paramedic's voice, chanting her name, Alice on her knees beside him, holding her unbroken hand in a grip as tight as life.  
  
She shook her hand free, the bones loose in her skin. "Weren't we idealistic?" she begins again, calmer. "Weren't we right?"  
  
There were circles under his eyes, dark as bruises. He blinked slowly. "Yeah. We were. We were pretty stupid, too."  
  
He was trying to make her laugh, she supposed. "Working at WEN, working beside the IAI people, beside Alice. It was right. Then you came and dragged me into your cesspool of ambivalent politicism."  
  
"If I hadn't, that guy, Brad Whatshisname, would have dragged you into his cesspool of vague Hollywoodism."  
  
They both knew the might-have-beens. If she had not gone to New York, maybe it wouldn't have happened. If Charlotte had not gone to New York.  
  
"Brent Carter. It happened anyway."  
  
Neither of them were certain if she meant Hollywood or the shooting.  
  
  
  
Now: Home  
  
The sound of the gun hitting the wall when he ran out of ammunition. The smell of his sweaty, wet tennis shoes as he stopped beside her.  
  
She forgot to play dead until after she'd blinked and his foot was in the air, rushing down so fast, slamming her to the ground before she had time to slide away.  
  
The mechanical motion of his leg jacking back, knee bending, following through to her ribs, her face, bruising her breasts in her bra, coming down on her back as she lay there, crying, without the breath to scream.  
  
Finally, he hooked the toe of his shoe under her hip, nudged her up, onto her back.  
  
His face was spangled by the tears caught on her eyelashes. They stared at each other for a long time. Sirens approached.  
  
The spit was cool as it ran down the side of her face.  
  
She was so ashamed. She presses her fist to her chest as the humiliation overwhelms her again.  
  
Then there is bright light and the explosion of pain as his body lands on hers.  
  
  
  
End.  
  
***  
  
Author's Notes: Well. Let's just say that CJ's reactions in "The Women of Qumar," while not entirely unexpected, were mysterious, to say the least.  
  
This is me respecting and accepting everybody's explanations of why she acted the way she did until ABS gives us a reason (puts that futile hope up on the shelf beside "whatever happened to Mandy/Cathy?" and "does Josh still see a shrink?").  
  
It is okay to be furious and passionate about violence against women, both domestic and institutionalised, without having been a victim of it yourself. Case in point: me :)  
  
While writing this story, I was constantly reminded by the situation I'd set up in CJ's past of the Ecole Polytechnique murders in December of 1989. Just so you know, because, of course, you care :)  
  
This story (not unlike this author's note) has no satisfying conclusion because there isn't one. 


End file.
